


The Corporal

by cbstrike



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bittersweet, Corporal Cormoran Strike, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Loss of Virginity, Older Man/Younger Woman, Origin Story, POV First Person, Pre-Canon, Sex, Smut, canon age gap so you know we're in for a ride, ill fix it dont worry, so many typos, twists and turns bec its me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29923170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cbstrike/pseuds/cbstrike
Summary: Newly single 18-year-old Robin Ellacott is away at uni, catching the eye of the mysterious army man that frequents her gym.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	The Corporal

The first time I saw him was at the gym. My mate convinced me to take self-defense classes taught there in the weekends. I didn’t fancy it much. The instructor was all useless judo moves and flirtatious overtures but with that campus creeper about wearing creepy animal masks and goosing co-eds in campuses around town, even useless judo moves might have some use.

Plus, he was also there. All dark and large and broody, keeping to himself in one corner with the punching bags.

He wasn’t pretty, but I thought he was attractive.

“Ew,” my mate Tina looked like she sucked on a lemon. “He’s like, _thirty_!”

“Aren’t you obsessed with Johnny Depp?” I countered. “He’s about forty!”

Tina rolled her eyes. “That’s Johnny Depp, not some gym rando.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna talk to him,” I reasoned. And then shrugged, “I just like the look of him.”

“Why?” Tina half-whined. “He’s _so old_.”

In Tina’s defence, thirty _is_ old. But maybe he isn’t thirty! Maybe he’s younger and he just looked a bit older, that’s all. And besides, who cares what age he is? I’m almost nineteen. I’m an adult. And besides, I wasn’t doing anything. I was only looking.

For about a month of going to those classes once a week, he was always there. In that time, we somehow found out that he was a Corporal of the RMP headquartered up at the castle. That he was called ‘Strike’. That he trained at this civillian gym near her campus and hung out at the pubs around to pick up co-eds.

It could be true, I mean, there’s also a rumor around that his da’s apparently Mick Jagger or Jonny Rokeby or someone. He didn’t look much like either of them, though. But he’s also never really looked our way or anything when we were there for the judo classes or just working out. I think all the gym rats have tried it on with us at some point, but he’s never so much looked our way.

Except that one time, when I saw him took large gulps off his water bottle and his eyes locked on mine. And he kind of glared at me, actually. Like I was staring when I shouldn’t have. So I looked away hurriedly.

“You know what I think,” said Tina when she somehow caught on I was still kind of thinking about the Corporal even though I haven’t brought him up in weeks. “You’re just looking for the exact opposite of your ex.”

She was right. Strike definitely looked _nothing_ like Matt, who was so heart-achingly handsome, I still sometimes cry about us breaking up. But he’s also such a colossal cheat, he caused a chlamydia outbreak at the University of Bath! Or so that’s what Tina told me that she heard through the grapevine. I doubted that. If anyone was spreading STIs around, it’s that cow, Sarah Shadlock--I shook my head. I don’t care anymore. Not really. I’m on the other side of the country! Matt isn’t my problem anymore.

“Will you just leave it?” I told Tina, a little more snappishly than I meant. “I haven’t even talked to him!”

“If it’s soldiers you’re into—”

“I’m not—”

“Suit yourself,” Tina sighed. “I was going to invite you out with me and Sam. His mate Gary’s cute. _And_ he’s definitely only, like, twenty-two, _tops_.”

“I don’t feel like going out.” I whined, crossing my arms and pouting against my side of our room.

“Okay,” said Tina. And then winking at me, she said, “Don’t wait up.”

The next weekend, our idiot instructor thought it would be fun to invite Strike for a demonstration. Without even uttering a word, Strike stopped his own work out, headed up into the ring, and threw the idiot on his back like some MMA fighter.

We had to call an ambulance, because something in the guy’s back tore.

“Dickhead can’t even land right,” I heard him grumble, walking away from the coppers that also came to ask everyone some questions. And then, he turned to us and declared, “Everything he’s been teaching is garbage, by the way.”

I couldn’t stop grinning. I seemed to have caught his eye then, because he gave me a double look before turning around and walking back to his corner.

I followed him, chancing my luck, thinking how sexy he looked, back all muscly, calves toned. He didn’t look like our vain instructor, whose body looked sculpted but somehow not strong. Strike looked like his fitness came from life, not the gym. Like they had stories.

Following him for a chat, it occurred to me that I think he’s attractive because he’s so mysterious. Like a mystery calling out to me to be solved. I’ve always found that so intriguing.

“What would you suggest, then?” I asked, folding my arms and leaning casually against the wall.

He quirked his eyebrows at me, and saw him give my body a quick look from head to foot.

He shrugged. “A whistle? They’ve got fancy ones now. Pepper sprays with ink so the fucker can’t hide.”

“What if there’s no time to get the whistle?”

“That’s the sort he should be teaching you,” he reasoned. His voice was low. Accent somewhere south. “How to get the whistle in time.”

I bit the inside of my lip, holding out my hand. “I’m Robin.”

He shook it. “Cormoran.”

“Cornwall!” I said, realising the accent.

His expression seemed to lighten. “How did you—?”

I shrugged, smiling back at him. “Just one of those things. Heard it on a pub quiz and never forgot it again. The name of the giant from _Jack and the Beanstalk_.”

An awkward lull where I realised, our hands were still clasped in mid-air, and that our palms were both sweaty from working out.

I saw him again the night after. Spotted him at the bar at my local. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. It was like fate or something.

“Broke anyone’s back lately?” I joked, sitting on the stool next to him, feeling Tina’s disapproval from across the room. She’s unhappy with me now. I was supposed to be on a double date. But her new boyfriend’s mate was kind of smarmy.

Cormoran smirked, and only gestured for the barman. He ordered a Doom Bar and gestured towards me. I felt a frisson of excitement. Is this how things go? Dating as an adult? So smoothly? A few kind of curt exchanges and now he’s buying me a drink?

I also order a Doom Bar, and make a face. It was disgusting. That made him laugh.

He orders me a white wine before he takes the two pints and we find a quiet corner.

“I heard you prefer the civilian gym to keep your boxing moves secret,” I tell him at some point when he told me how he was training for some military boxing match.

That made him chuckle loudly and I bite the inside of my lip again. He’s _nothing_ like Matthew. All rugged like a man. A proper one. Not a _boy_. A _man_.

Tina, not my most tactful of mates (also tipsy possibly at this point), stomped over to us and said, “It’s getting late, Rob. I think we better go home.”

And we do walk home. Gary walking morosely by himself a few paces ahead, Tina slumped against Sam as they giggle drunkenly together down the dark streets. I fall into step with Cormoran.

He offers me a cigarette. I take one and make a creditable impression that I know what I’m doing. I guess I’m what you would call a ‘social smoker’.

When we arrived at the front of the entryway into the dark stairwell shortcut up to our halls of residence, I took Cormoran’s hand—large! How intriguing—and write my number on his palm.

I dropped that bad self-defence class, Cormoran teaching me the right way to go about it during afternoon picnics in the park. I loved it, seeing someone who isn’t Matt, being in a relationship that wasn’t the only thing I’ve ever known.

We were sat under a tree, me blinking at the Latin poem I’m trying to make sense of for a class. He was only smoking and picking at the sandwiches I packed.

Then I felt him move, laying his head on my thigh. This surprised me, because apart from some heated snogging, it wasn’t really very intimate. Not yet. It’s only been about two weeks.

I put down my book, looking down at his face that was only looking somewhere past me unseeingly. I ran my fingers through his hair and thought, I could love this guy.

“I’m getting deployed,”

I felt my heart sink. “Oh.”

And then all of a sudden, I was terrified for him. “Where?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know until it’s soon, but they’re saying it’s Cyprus. Maybe Basrah.”

I didn’t even notice that our hands were entwined until he kissed the back of mine.

We sit there for awhile. I just look at his face, wishing this wasn’t so new. Because I wanted him to stay. I wanted to ask him if he would. I wanted it to be a real choice, because it isn’t. Not yet. He wouldn’t stay in Edinburgh for a college co-ed he goes on picnics with and occasionally snogs.

“Are you scared?”

His eyes focused on mine now. It took him a beat. Like he was waiting for me to tell him not to go. But then he sad, “No.”

And I realised I don’t understand war or soldiers or what these things meant at all.

“When are you going?” I ask.

“A month?” he sounded unsure. And then he smiled, “I made it to the finals, that boxing thing.”

I smile down at him because he sounded proud about that, but all I could think about was how small and inconsequential that was, or my Latin revision, or every other thing worrying me right now, compared with the very real prospect of this young, fine man, being sent away to war.

“I’m going up against this Scotsman. Beast, they call him.”

I went out with Tina a few nights after that, meeting up with Sam, who was never without Gary. After that first night, Tina and I never brought up Cormoran ourselves. While Cormoran never told me much about his work, the two squaddies can’t seem to shut their mouths about what they get up to at Edinburgh Castle.

“Good effin’ riddance!” Sam declared when Gary mentioned that army higher-ups were thinking of deploying Cormoran. “Can’t lighten up with straight-shootin’ Strike pokin’ his nose everywhere.”

Tina was trying to temper her boyfriend’s agitation, which grows worse with drink. Tina was saying that Sam was feeling some work-related pressure, dropping hints that his bosses have it in for him, that Cormoran was working covertly to get him court marshalled.

“They love Strike,” Gary added. “I hear it’ll be Kabul they’re sending him. Isn’t that where that arsefuck, Chiswell got KIA’d?” he asked Sam. Gary was chatty and loud when he was drunk. “Would love to go, though. Get my hands dirty for a change. Have an adventure. Work a high-profile case like that—and with Strike! I’ll get promoted for sure!”

Gary then proceeded daydreaming about testing his defensive driving training on minefields, and I only felt even sadder, thinking I bit off more than I could chew, dating a soldier.

“Might’ve been a mistake, dating military guys.” Tina intimated sadly when we laid in our beds, unable to sleep.

“Yeah.” I sighed. And then asked, “Do you regret it?”

“No.” Tina admitted. “You?”

There’s nothing yet to regret, I thought. It was so new. They haven’t even slept together yet. But there was feeling there. I have feelings for Cormoran now that was growing bigger than attraction, so I said, “No.”

Almost immediately, things went downhill from there.

Well, not exactly downhill, more of _nowheresville_ , really. Radio silence. Three days, no calls, no texts. “What a shit!” I exclaimed, yelling at my phone after sending a harsh text to Cormoran telling him that if he’s blowing me off, he ought to have the decency to—

“There you are!” Tina burst through the room, looking like she was dying to tell her something important. “Sam just told me what happened.”

My stomach lurched, immediately guilty that I’ve been cursing this git I’ve found myself dating when he might’ve been hurt in action or something.

Except, Edinburgh isn’t exactly war-torn or anything.

Tina said that Cormoran has been building a case against Sam—something about finding a kilo of marijuana in his kit bag, although Sam swears up and down that he was framed and if he was a dealer, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave it in his duffel on top of his laundry--and that Sam’s being discharged, and whether it’s going to be the honorable kind or not is still up in the air.

“Oh, and then they had that big boxing thing and apparently, the guy Strike fought bit him in the face!”

_“What?”_

I felt like Tina threw me like then thousand different things all at once, but that one, I registered.

Gary took me to Cormoran’s place—or outside the building that housed the officers. According to Gary, it was not prohibited or anything, but not encouraged, so I probably wouldn’t get Cormoran into trouble.

“Thanks,” I tell him, because he had been helpful.

“Robin, can I ask—” said Gary. “Why Strike?”

By which he meant, why not him.

 _Because you’re kind of a creep?_ _Because I like him?_

I pretended not to get what he meant.

Gary shrugged. “It’s always Strike, the girls go for.” and then, with a hint of nastiness he says, “You’re not the first, you know. That’s come around here asking after him.”

If I had known at that moment that Lance Corporal Gary Topley would end up rising through the ranks with his body blown up in Afghanistan the day after he made Sargeant in five years from that night, I wouldn’t have told him, “I hope you get your adventure, Gary. You deserve it.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, finding Cormoran with a black eye, his cheek clearly bearing scars the shape of human bites.

“Robin!” he said, surprised. “What are you—come inside.”

It was a small studio apartment, very tidy and very sparse. Like a freshly-made motel room and Cormoran only just arrived.

“What happened?” I ask him, sitting next to him on the sofa.

“Psycho bit me in the face.” he tells me, wincing as I couldn’t help but touch his face. “Sorry I haven’t been ringing.”

And then I remember that I was supposed to be mad at him.

I withdrew my hands, sliding my butt away from him on the sofa. “Were you blowing me off?”

“No!” he said immediately. “I just didn’t want you showing up here.”

“Because of all the other co-eds you take back here because they actually put out?”

He glared at that, and then rolled his eyes looking agitated. “Has Topley still been putting that about?”

I cross my arms. I feel like being petulant. Acting like the jealous girlfriend. Because I am. The jealous part, not really the girlfriend part—or…?

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” he started. I was stunned. “Because they’re all just dying to shag a grumpy old git with a black eye and a bite on his face.”

“I don’t mind,” I tell him. I don’t know why I did, but I tell him that.

“Yes you do.” he argued. Correctly.

I snort. “Ha! Think too highly of yourself, do you?”

He gives me a small smile at that, and I realise that ten years is a huge gap if you’re eighteen and twenty-eight.

And then he was conciliatory. Even amorous, reaching out for me, and I move to slide back next to him on the couch.

He kisses me, slow and deep and my annoyance melts away to longing. I let it happen for awhile, submerging into the pleasures of a good snog, his hands rubbing up my arms, mine gently cupping his cheek.

We pull away to breathe. “Have you had very many girls around here?” I ask him because I couldn’t help it, because my eighteen year old brain understood that it was not smart to put myself in this position, but doesn’t have yet the self-control to walk away.

He shook his head. I don’t want to believe him, thinking what if I’m getting played, but gut instinct tells me he’s telling the truth. And I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. It isn’t any of my business, but I do. I do care. Because I was at the precipice of wanting to give him something I never wanted Matthew to have, because I couldn’t trust him to know what he was doing, that he will treat me with care and consideration as I instinctively, for some reason, know I could get from Cormoran.

I need to know I wasn’t another of a long succession of girls he’s ensnared in his well-woven web of broody mysteriousness.

“There was a girl,” he tells me. “Charlotte. We were on and off near ten years—mostly off.”

He tells me about six months previously, how he had spent what little money he had to meet her in Ibiza, only find her… he couldn’t say how he found her, and I could tell it caused him pain to recall it. “Thought I was done,” he tells me. “Thought that was it for me. I had absolutely no plans of—” but he stopped, looking into my eyes, and I think I knew what he was going to say.

I kissed him.

“There hasn’t been anyone else,” he tells me. “I didn’t think there would be anyone else.”

We were doomed. My still-forming brain knew that much. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t care, not that night. Not right then.

We moved to the bed, him slightly on top of me as our kissing grew more intense, me having to take lungfuls of breath before plunging back into the bliss of his kiss.

I was very aware of his large hands, roaming around my skin. Squeezing my breast over my shirt, before traversing down, easily finding its way on the skin of my abdomen, creeping up to massage my breast over my bra.

He kissed my neck, and I try to concentrate on that instead of trying to remember what sort of underwear I was wearing. This hadn’t been the plan at all, but I want it. So much. I’m ready.

He looked down at my body, one hand working the button of my jeans and that’s when I tell him.

“I’ve never—”

He looks at me, his expression gentle and kind, and I know I have made a good decision.

When he asks me, “Do you want to stop?” I knew that I didn’t.

I shook my head, trying to swallow the nerves forming in my throat. The furthest I ever got with Matt was that one and only time I let him go down on me, and I was too in my head, too agitated and worked up because he didn’t know what he was doing, thinking that I deserved better than to be a warm body for a boy to practice on.

But this doesn’t feel like practice. The way he grinned up at me as he pulled my jeans off my legs.

“Purple butterflies,” he remarked of my childish knickers, teasing, and I felt my face burn with embarrassment, covering it with my hands.

He laughed, not unkindly, but amusedly.

He laid next to me on his crisp bed that was a tight fit for two fit people, arms over my torso, snuggling his face against my neck, breathing me in.

“Embarrassing.” I whisper, gently pulling at the hair against his arms.

“Nah,” he tells me, licking up my neck, sending chills up my body.

“What do we do next?” I ask him, even though I’m not a complete idiot and know the next was taking off the rest of our clothes. He’ll enjoy my sensible nude-colored bra for sure. I shake my head, wondering at what age I’d start wearing uncomfortable yet sensual knickers in case of spontaneous shagging opportunities.

“Up to you.” he tells me, even though his hands were pulling up my jumper. I sit up slightly to pull it off me completely.

“Your turn.” I tell him, because he was still in joggers and t-shirt.

He sits up with me, too, pulling at his shirt from behind, and I had to take in a sharp breath of surprise, unable to help resting my palm on his firm pecs, trailing it down the ridges of toned abs.

He’s _nothing_ like Matt, whose body had been slender and boyish, who couldn’t produce chest hair to save his life.

I rake my fingers lightly against his chest hair, appreciating that I am half-naked with a _man_.

He kisses me as we sat on the bed together, his fingertips running up and down my bare back, sending tingles up my spine, the other holding onto my arm. My own hands were bolder, more forward, tentatively feeling him hard and huge under his jogging pants.

He groans against my mouth, and I pull away to look at his face, his expression, as I run my fingers down his rippling abs, straight past the waistband of his bottoms, to wrap my hands around his rigid cock.

I’ve held Matt’s before, and I had thought that big, having no point of reference. Cormoran’s was thick and much as I try to clamp it down, I felt a little worried.

He pulled off his bottoms, his dick bobbing free of its confines, long, and hard and thick and I feel him squeeze my shoulder, kiss my neck. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I say, and mustering some bravery, I tuck my hair behind my ears and bend down to kiss his head.

He groans at that, surprised, and I feel the clasp of my bra pop open as I opened my mouth to kiss at his cock some more. I’m tentative, unpracticed. Thinking a little that maybe if I let Matt talk me into more sex stuff, I would know what I’m doing better.

But Cormoran is shifting, wanting to lay down the bed and I pull off him to lay back down his arms, pumping his cock in my tiny hand, now slick with his precum and my saliva.

He kisses me on the mouth, his hands cupping my bare breast, squeezing at my nipple, making it hard.

He shifts, so he’s a little over me, and I let him go to hold him lightly by his side, wondering if this is it, if he’s about to position himself and thrust up inside me. But he only bends his head to suckle a nipple and I gasp with such surprise, he jerks to look up at me.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice thick with lust, face stormy with worry.

“Nothing.” I breathe, surprised at the burst of pleasure of his tender lips there. This was also something I let Matt do sometimes, and it did absolutely nothing for me that I actually worried if my tits were broken or something. But Cormoran, his gentle lips, his practiced mouth, my hips were gyrating up of their own accord just off the tingling and ecstasy of him licking and worrying at my breasts.

I couldn’t keep my voice down if I tried, hearing my own low moans that I thought porn stars faked. But the way my body rocked, my fingers raked into Cormoran’s hair, the sounds I couldn’t help but make, they were as primal and as natural and as ancient as the beating of my heart.

My arousal was building. So much that I felt the ache in my groin.

“Corm,” I whimpered, hearing the neediness in my voice. And he gave me a wicked grin, before finally kissing down my ribs, my tummy, sliding himself further down, head between my legs, delicious mouth hovering over my still-clothed crotch.

He gives wet pecks over my mound, and I realise that he’s giving each butterfly a kiss. I giggle, wishing I was wearing something more appropriately adult. I had a lacy black pair I bought back when I loved Matt so much, I thought I was going to let him go all the way.

I gasp when he licks a stripe up my slit, surprised by the move and wishing he’d remove my knickers already.

He rubs over it his fingers and I gasp again, lurching forward a little in surprise that he was able to hit where it is most pleasurable when she, herself sometimes needed some experimental touches to find precisely where.

My knickers are wet and ruined now, my mind having the small sliver of space to worry about having to wear crusty knickers when I leave.

Finally, he peels off the last of my clothes, and I feel so in need, so turned on, that there is no more thinking. I even forget to feel self-conscious about my bushy crotch. But he didn’t seem to mind, parting my folds to lap directly at my clit before I could react.

“Ahh,” I sob, overwhelmed, shaking with the sort of unrelenting pleasure that was almost too much. I scramble to hold his hand and he grips it, pinning my hips on the bed as his tongue moves against the most intimate part of me that I feel about wrecked.

I feel him move his other hand, the one not holding onto me, using his fingers to rub at where he wasn’t feasting and I sob again, knowing that it’s coming, and when it does, it will be the strongest I’ve ever had.

He just rubbed and rubbed, licked and licked and I am exploding, becoming boneless putty in his hands. I might’ve blacked out, screamed, and cried, I wasn’t sure, because the next thing I knew he was laid next to me again, plunging his tongue in my willing mouth.

We take a moment. We take many long moments where I try to reassemble. I thought I knew orgasms, but I guess you learn something new every day.

He is only laid next to me, arm over my midriff, but I could feel his erection hard and insistent against my hip. He’s rocking slightly, and I turn my head down to look at it. Large and leaking. And unthinkingly, like reflex, I gather some spit in my hand before wrapping it around him and pumping it as he rocked a little quicker, grunting with his movement.

His eyes are closed, his mouth slack, concentrating on the pleasure I know isn’t enough.

“I’m ready,” I whisper, planting a light kiss on his lips.

“You sure?” he asks again, gruff and loud, but I heard his real plea, _Please be sure._

I nod, gulping. Hoping I can do this part for him when he did so much for me already.

He hovered over me, arms stretching to pull at a kit bag from under his bed. His weight on me was heavy and I appreciate how much larger he was, how much older.

He finally alights a little, holding a condom that he swiftly, ably, opens and rolls over him.

And I spread my legs, concentrating on my breathing. He is wide between me, and I wonder if I should hook my arms under my hindlegs, if that would make it easier, but the thought made me feel shy.

I groan when he rubs his cock against my folds, grinding like that for awhile until I’m panting with renewed arousal.

“Go slow,” I whisper, keeping my voice low because I don’t want him to hear it shaky. Because I do want this. I do want it to be him. I do want it to be now. Before I checken out, before he leaves, before this ends.

He was going slow, but he feels big that I feel the pressure of the stretch. _Relax,_ I tell myself. It doesn’t hurt. The slide is slick. It’s just big. There’s just pressure.

He is sweating at the effort, pulling out a little and inching forward more at the thrust. I half want him to just do it, all the way, get it over with. Rip it like a band-aid.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Tight—”

I don’t know if he means it as a good thing. And if I weren’t concentrating on trying to decide if this feels good or just weird, I’d ask if I was somehow hurting him.

It felt like ages, but he was finally inside. All of him. Thick and full and I wonder how this is meant to be good, really. But it isn’t bad. It’s like pulling muscle that needed warming up.

He stopped like that for awhile, deep inside me as he coaxes my legs to wrap around his body. I gasp at that sensation, because he’s even deeper now. And I feel like we’re fused, and my feelings are a concoction of being glad that I’m doing this on my own terms, that I feel safe and cared for, but also part of me wish I waited. Because this kind man on top of me, inside of me—

I don’t love him. Not yet.

Like a fool, a childish little fool that believed in fairytales, I wish we were making love right now, instead of just having sex. I almost wish I did it with Matt when we loved each other best.

He was thrusting slowly, perspiring and sweating with effort, and I squirm trying to get a good angle. Because it feels good sometimes, when he its it just right, but something feels wrong and I’m almost frustrated, not understanding how my insides could rearrange when we’re not even moving very much.

“Corm,”

He pulls out, and I’m almost overcome with gladness that he’s such a good person, and then shame that I’m such a bad lay.

“Need a break?” he asks, kissing my shoulder as he laid back next to me, gathering me in his arms.

I can’t look at him now. I only nod.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, planting soft kisses on my neck.

I shook my head. It doesn’t hurt. Not the acute, physical kind, nor the big, scary kind. The sort that could permanently scar or ruin a woman.

And that relaxes me, knowing for damn sure that I will be fine. That I knew young women my own age who thinks harrowing first times are just par for course of girlhood; a biological birthright like menstrual cramps and childbirth.

Mine isn’t like that. It’s with a man who knew what he was doing. Who knew when to stop. Whom I like a lot, and wished had time to fall for.

I turn around to face him, snuggling close, kissing him.

We kiss for a good while. Slow, unhurried, and luxurious. Neither insisting for more.

“When do you leave?” I ask him. I had a hunch that it wasn’t just him recuperating from his last boxing match that had him blowing me off

“In a week.” he sighed.

“When do you come back?” I ask before I could stop myself.

“It won’t be here, when I return.”

I look around, considering it, watching our hands idly caressing, entwining as if they were moving independently of our body.

“I could be a soldier’s girl,” I say, smiling as I feel him kiss my cheek.

“Wouldn’t that be grand?” he agreed. “But I can’t do that to you, Robin. You’re eighteen—”

I’m surprised by this, almost, realising how young that was, feeling like I grew up in the span of an hour. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

I nod. He was right.

I snuggle up even closer to him, feeling sad because I knew the only way forward is a clean break. Anything halfway would only be messy, would only hurt. I miss him already. I miss what we could’ve been, knowing it will never come into fruition. Already, the idea of him is starting to cement. The one who got away. Because what we have had to end just as it was beginning.

He took me back to my halls, and we stood close and kissed for another good while before parting.

“Don’t die.” I tell him as he walked away in the lonely lamplit street.

He turned around, walking backwards away from me. “I’ll try!”

I laugh, and find myself uttering a wayward prayer to whichever God was real for Cormoran to not die. And that was it. The last I saw of him.

A few weeks later, a man in a gorilla mask tried it with me in a dark stairwell, but Cormoran bought me a fancy rape whistle and taught me how to elbow, twist and knee the fucker in the balls. It was the shitty self-defence instructor who used his shitty class to get the address of young women. I helped put him away before he did any real damage.

“What’s so funny?” I ask Eric, taking my seat on the table adjacent to his.

“Get this, Ellacott,” he says, incredulous. “Private dick rings asking about Lula Landry. Tells me he wants—not just a chat, _no_ , but the file! The actual full file!”

“Why would he do that?”

“In bed with The Sun?” he shrugged. “The bollocks on him. I suppose he thinks he’s such a big shot, Anstis told me his old man is Jonny Rokeby.”

I stop short. “Is that Cormoran Strike then who called?” my heart thudding. Private detective now. I had gone. To Selly Oak. When I heard about what happened to him two years ago. But there was already someone there. Gorgeous brunette. So I left, thinking I wouldn’t be able to bear it if he wouldn’t even remember me or what we shared.

“Yeah. Wants to meet for a pint. Says he’s got info to trade for the file.”

“I’ll go if you’re not interested.”

Wardle laughed. “He won’t have anything, Ellacott. But if you’re up for wasting your time, be my guest. Don’t blame me if he wastes your time and tries to get into your knickers.”

I suppress a grin, thinking that ship had already sailed.

I find him in a booth, and the way he grinned at me when he spotted me, I’m eighteen again, sat on lush grass under a tree, with his head on my lap.

“You didn’t die, then.” I tell him, not sure what I should say.

“I did say I’ll try.” He smiled. And then, suddenly he asked, “Seeing anyone?”

“No.” I reply. “You.”

“No.”

“Good.” I say.

“Good.” he agrees.

We end up back in my flat, the Landry file forgotten in my workbag as we picked up where we left off six years ago. There would be enough for the rest of it later. But first, this.


End file.
